Click here to check if anything new just came in.
October 31 2011
Mac OS 10.8 users already doing external testing
Mac OS 10.8 testers both inside Apple’s HQ and in the surrounding area of Silicon Valley have been spotted in Web Logs by MacRumors. Indeed, looking at our own logs (above), 10.8 users have been hitting our servers since mid-August, though only in numbers that probably could have been faked.
More recently, however, 10.8 testing has grown more abundant, with testers hitting our site every day including on weekends from non-Apple IP addresses throughout October.
Similar patterns emerged in testing OS 10.7 which leads us to conclude that this is still very early testing and it is likely more than a year before we’ll see even public betas of the OS.
Still, very nice to see Apple’s already working on the next big cat.
Related articles
- Apple looking to bring AirPlay Mirroring, iMessage application to Mac OS X (9to5mac.com)
- Former Compaq Chairman, and current Mac user, reveals that Jobs asked Compaq to license the MacOS in 1999 (9to5mac.com)
- Refurbished Apple PowerMac G5 Dual 1.8GHz Desktop for $265 + $4 s&h (9to5toys.com)
September 30 2011
Make an Invisible Folder and Hide Files in Plain Sight
Want to hide some files in plain sight? You can make a folder invisible to the eye, but not to the click with this neat trick. I learned this in 6th grade to hide files and apps from prying eyes, and despite it’s simplicity it worked to store games, movies, and pictures on school computers without anyone knowing where they were kept. Believe it or not it works, and if you have limited access to the Terminal it beats using the period method to hide folders.
- Right-click here and save this transparent PNG file to your desktop as ‘transparent.png’
- Go to your desktop and open “transparent.png” into Preview and hit Command+A followed by Command+C – this selects the entire files contents and copies them into your clipboard
- Now go back to the Mac OS X desktop and hit Command+Shift+N to create a new folder, name the folder nothing by hitting the spacebar a few times
- Now select the folder named nothing (” “) and hit Command+i to “Get Info” about the folder
- Click on the folder icon in the upper left corner and hit Command+V to paste the previously copied transparent.png file as the folders icon
Your folder is now invisible to the eye. In some ways this is preferable to creating a hidden folder by prepending a . in front of the name because it’s still accessible from the Finder’s GUI with a well placed mouse click, and as I mentioned before it doesn’t require the use of the Terminal to create. It’s also advantageous because it doesn’t show up if someone makes hidden files visible.
I would suggest burying this folder somewhere in an obscure place on the desktop or elsewhere to further obfuscate any attempts at finding it
Just remember the contents of the folder are not invisible, and could still be found via Spotlight or Recent Items if someone knew what to look for. To do that, you’d have to exclude the folder from Spotlight search and then clear out the Recent Items from time to time.
Here’s what such a folder will look like if you open it, notice the window bar has no name in it:
July 05 2011
Recommended: Lifehacker’s Guide to Building Your Own Hackintosh Mini
Lifehacker’s got a great post up that walks you through how to build yourself a Hackintosh Mini for less than $600. It’s said to result in a machine with a bit more powerful specs than the excellent Mac Mini from Apple, at a budget price tag.
The post and video cover the parts you’ll need to build it (including an optional SSD drive to improve speed and performance) and how to install OS X on it.
We’ll show you what you need to build it and walk you through the entire OS X installation.
My daughter uses a Mac Mini and they are quite powerful little machines. Even adding in the cost of a decent external monitor, this Hackintosh Mini looks like a good, cost-effective project – and of course a great way to get to grips with building your own machine and getting a taste of the OS X operating system.
Check out the Lifehacker how-to here:
http://lifehacker.com/5815715/how-to-build-a-hackintosh-mini-for-less-than-600
May 24 2011
Enable “Right-Click” on a Mac Laptop
If you or someone you know is coming to the Mac from the world of Windows and are accustomed to the concept of right-clicking, as in literally clicking on the right hand side of a trackpad or mouse, you’ll be relieved to find out this feature can be enabled in Mac OS X. This will work on any trackpad or touch mouse, including the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air
First, a reminder that a two fingered click functions as a right-click in Mac OS X. This is much faster and intuitive once you get the hang of it, but many recent Windows to Mac switchers seem to prefer the literal right-click method.
Enable a Literal Right-Click in Mac OS X
This is recommended to enable particularly for those new to the Mac platform:
- Open System Preferences
- Click on Trackpad
- Under the ‘One Finger’ section, select the checkbox next to “Secondary Click” and select “Bottom Right Corner”
- Adjust the standard Mac OS X secondary click behavior with a two fingered click as you see fit
I would suggest keeping things foolproof and having both options enabled.
The Two-Fingered Click is a Right-Click is a Secondary Click
The default setting on a Mac for touch surfaces is for a two-fingered click to register as the alternate “right” click. The right-click is officially called a secondary click, but the “right click” language is so deeply ingrained it’s generally how everyone refers to it in the Mac world as well as PC world. For this reason, we often refer to the secondary click as a “right-click” just to keep things consistent.
April 15 2011
900+ Secret iPhone Ringtones on your Mac
Are you bored with your iPhone ringtones? You probably know by now that you can make iPhone ringtones yourself with iTunes, but instead of chopping up a song, why not get some ringtones that actually sound like they belong to a phone?
932 free iPhone ringtones are sitting on my Mac?? What???
Yes, there are 932 potential ringtones sitting right on your Mac that we’re about to introduce you to. There is a small catch though, these files aren’t ringtones yet, they’re actually sound effects included in the iLife and Garageband suites. Fortunately they’re great quality and loop well, so most of them make fantastic ringtones. With a little patience, we can convert any of these sound effect files to an iPhone compatible ringtone, so here’s how:
Locating & Listening to the Ringtone Sound Effects
There are two main directories that contain the sound effects we’re looking for, they are both located in:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/
The easiest way to get there is by hitting Command+Shift+G from the Finder and pasting in that directory path.
Once you’re in that directory, you’ll find two subdirectories: iLife Sound Effects/ and Apple Loops for GarageBand/
932 sound effects is somewhat overwhelming initially, so we will focus on just a single subfolder and choose a few files from there to convert:
- From a Finder window, hit Command+Shift+G and enter the following path:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects/Work - Home/ - Within the “Work – Home” directory you’ll find a bunch of .caf files, each one can be converted to a ringtone for the iPhone
- You can use Quick Look to preview the sound files, just hit spacebar over each one and it’ll play in the Finder
I think the most ringtone appropriate in this directory are “Cell Phone Ringing.caf”, “Telephone Ringing 02.caf”, and “Old Telephone Ring.caf” but obviously this is a matter of personal preference. For the purpose of this tutorial we’ll focus on “Cell Phone Ringing.caf”, which sounds like it’s from a 1980′s block cell phone.
Converting Sound Effects to iPhone Ringtones
Now that we’ve found a sound effect you want as your ringtone, do the following:
- Double-click “Cell Phone Ringing.caf” to open it in QuickTime Player
- From the File menu, select “Save As”
- Select “Movie” as the Format to save as, it will be a .mov file – save this to your desktop to make it easy to find
Now that you’ve changed the file type, we have to change the suffix to match a type that iTunes will recognize as an iPhone ringtone file:
- Go back to your Mac desktop and locate and rename the newly created “Cell Phone Ringing.mov” file to “Cell Phone Ringing.m4r”
- Ignore the warning dialog about file types and click “Use .m4r”
After the file is an .m4r, just bring it into iTunes:
- Double-click “Cell Phone Ringing.m4r” to open the file in iTunes
- Look under the ‘Ringtones’ sidebar item and you’ll find your newly created ringtone file, this can be tested in iTunes and then synced to your iPhone and used as usual
Repeat these steps for any of the other .caf files to create more ringtones, you can make as many as you want. There is a ton of potential here, so have fun exploring the sound effects.
Additional Notes
- The ‘Apple Loops for Garageband’ directory contains mostly musical instruments and short loops, if you want a musical instrument or genre type for your ringtone this is where to look. There are 501 loops in this directory, and not all of them sound like instruments. Sure there are guitars, drums, and pianos, but there are also synths and techno-like audio effects that sound like something from the Tron Legacy soundtrack (Plucky Guitar Loop 01.caf and Synth Array 19.caf and Techno Synth 02.caf for instance). There’s a ton of diversity in here, so explore.
- In ‘iLife Sound Effects’ you will find 13 subdirectories that contain different types of sound effects, with everything from mooing cows to old retro phone sound effects
- If a sound effect is too long, or you only like part of it, you can trim the music file using Quick Time (that tutorial was written for an MP3 but it works the same on any file in QuickTime).
Have fun!
‘Do Not Track’ Tool Added to Safari in OS X Lion
In an uncharacteristic piece, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has added a “do not track” tool to Safari in the latest developer build of the forthcoming Mac OS X Lion. This tool is, as one might guess, for increased security.
Here’s an explanation of the “do not track” feature:
Do-not-track tools in browsers automatically send out messages to websites and online-advertising networks requesting that users’ movements around the Web not be tracked. The system will only work if Web companies agree to respect peoples’ tracking preferences.
This new feature was proposed by the FTC and is a voluntary system wherein browser notify ad networks of the “do not track” preference, and it in turn is up to the ad networks to honor this user preference. Safari is now joining Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Firefox. Google is remaining suspiciously quiet.
If I had to guess, Chrome, which is of course made by Google, will not support this features, because Google makes their money from selling ads, and tracking who they are advertising to. This whole thing appears to be political, and hopes to undercut Google’s power. Perhaps not, but that’s how it strikes me at the moment.
November 17 2010
MacBook Pro 8GB RAM Upgrade & Review
Last week I posted a deal to get an 8GB RAM upgrade kit, the price was too good to resist and I went ahead and bought the upgrade myself. Here’s my review and impressions on upgrading a Mac to 8GB of RAM. If you have ADHD and don’t want to read everything below, here’s the Readers Digest version: buy an 8GB upgrade, it rocks.
The RAM I got was the Kingston Apple 8GB Upgrade Kit
Installation is so easy it’s barely worth mentioning, upgrading RAM in the MacBook Pro is a matter of undoing a few screws on the bottom of the Mac, lifting off the aluminum case, removing the old RAM, and popping in the new memory. From start to finish it takes maybe 10 minutes at most.
So now I’ll try to answer some common questions about having a Mac with 8GB of RAM:
Is the MacBook Pro faster with 8GB RAM?
Yes, it is noticeably faster especially under heavy app usage and system load. Why? RAM is fast and virtual memory is slow, with 8GB of RAM the threshold to hit swap is significantly higher. This is what I see now in Activity Monitor:
As you can see, there are no “Page outs” (the movement of data from RAM to hard disk). I have a ton of apps open right now and I’m not even close to hitting virtual memory (you can read more about virtual memory in Mac OS X here). Anytime you can avoid using virtual memory your Mac will perform faster since it does not need to access memory contents from the slow spinning hard drive, remember the default HD speed in a MacBook Pro is a rather slow 5400 RPM, the speed of RAM blows this away.
8GB vs 4GB on the MacBook Pro
4GB of RAM is a good amount but 8GB is better. On a daily basis I frequently have the following apps open all at once: Photoshop, iTunes, Preview, Terminal, Transmit, Transmission, Text Wrangler, iChat, and here’s the real RAM hog: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, when you have three web browsers open at once with a ton of tabs open, your system will often slow to a crawl (web developers in particular can relate here). If you throw in a virtual machine, you’ve long hit the point of painful slowdowns. The reason for the slowdown I mentioned earlier, when Mac OS X is forced to start swapping data from physical memory to the 5400 RPM hard drive you feel the drag.
With 8GB I am doing the same work now that I was earlier today, but earlier today I was using 1.5GB of swap and now there is none being used, the difference is remarkable – no more beach balls and halts. The MacBook Pro simply performs better with 8GB of RAM.
Is upgrading the MacBook Pro to 8GB of RAM worth it?
Yes, particularly if you’re a power user. The price of an 8GB upgrade is cheap enough now that the gain in system performance is worth it. If you use a ton of applications at once, you will notice the difference. If you find yourself grinding around in virtual memory on a semi-regular basis, you will be thrilled with the speed increase. The average computer user probably doesn’t need 8GB of RAM, but any power user or tech worker will greatly enjoy the additional memory. Reading a few system indicators, you can find out if your Mac needs a RAM upgrade if you aren’t sure that it would benefit you.
I think the only problem with upgrading to 8GB of RAM is that now I want to relieve the other performance bottle-neck, the stock 5400 RPM hard disk. I think if you really want to squeeze the most performance, maxing out the RAM and then upgrading the MacBook Pro hard drive is probably the ultimate combination. I definitely have my eye on the Seagate Momentus XT 500 SSD Hybrid Drive
Where to Buy an 8GB Upgrade for MacBook Pro
You can save a lot of money by not buying RAM directly from Apple, so go with a third party vendor instead. Yes that means you’ll have to install it yourself, but if you can use a screw driver, you can install RAM.
Here is the link to the 8GB kit I bought from Buy.com, the price seems to fluctuate but it’s worth checking out (I got mine for a crazy low $119.95 with free shipping):
8GB (2×4GB) Kingston Apple Kit for $119.95 with free shipping at Buy.com
The exact same Kingston 8GB kit is for sale on Amazon.com, the price seems to fluctuate as well (right now around $135, still very cheap):
8GB (2×4GB) Kingston Apple Kit from Amazon.com
While this review is specifically about the Kingston 8GB kit, I’ve used other brands in the past and as long as you get RAM from a quality vendor you should be fine. The Kingston kit from Amazon seems to compete in price closely with this Crucial upgrade too:
Crucial 8GB Upgrade Kit (4GBx2) from Amazon
Other than the occasional great deals on Buy.com, I’d buy RAM from Amazon
I think the bottom line is this; Mac OS X likes to use RAM, the more you give it, the better it performs under stress. 8GB of RAM is probably one of the most cost effective upgrades for a MacBook Pro that you can get.
November 16 2010
How to use the Screen Recorder on a Mac
If you need to record screen activity on a Mac, you don’t need to download any additional software because the functionality is built directly into Mac OS X.
Using the Screen Recorder in Mac OS X
The screen recorder function is included with QuickTime Player in Mac OS X 10.6 and later, meaning it’s free and doesn’t require any downloads. Here’s how to use it:
- Launch QuickTime Player (located in /Applications/)
- Pull down the File menu and select “New Screen Recording”
- Press the Red button to start recording the screen activity
- To stop recording, either press the Stop Recording button in the menubar, or hit Command+Control+Escape
- Once the recording is stopped, the capture is automatically opened in QuickTime Player as “Screen Recording.mov” which you can then save and use as you’d like
QuickTime Player gets out of the way when you are recording the screen so that the activity is not obstructed by the application, this is also why it’s best to just use the keyboard shortcut to halt the screen recorder.
A quick note for users of 10.5 or below: instead of paying for recording software, it’s often cheaper to just buy the Snow Leopard upgrade.
September 17 2010
Zoom into a picture with Quick Look
Here’s a Quick Look tip that’s pretty useful: you can zoom into any picture or PDF within Quick Look by holding down the Option key and then using the scroll wheel or trackpad. Try it out!
November 05 2009
Dislike 0.2 Adds a Disapproving Dislike Button to Facebook [Downloads]
Firefox only: Since the dawn of the Like button on Facebook, people have rallied for it's counterpart, the Dislike button. Although Facebook hasn't stepped up to the plate with their own Dislike button, French developer Thomas Moquet has made it possible for Firefox users.
If your Facebook feed is anything like ours, a Dislike button could be more than useful to let the overly lewd, crude, or socially unacceptable friend, know just how you feel about their updates. (Then again, you could just hide that user.) Only other Firefox users who have the add-on installed will be able to see your disapproval, so it's not as though it's tapping into some secret Facebook feature or anything like that.
Dislike 0.2 is a free, experimental extension, works wherever Firefox does.
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
